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It’s a long trip to the bottom of a Daily Grind travel mug, but Tess was almost there. She finished off the last strong swallow of French Roast, her eyes on the wooden table between them. Yeager’s hands were pink and puffy. He wore a wedding ring, but his finger ballooned around it in such a way that you couldn’t ever imagine it coming off. Tess had an irrational dislike of men who wore wedding rings, perhaps because she had been hit on by so many of them. Her father had never worn one. He always said he didn’t need to look at his hand to remember he was married, and he’d worry about any man who did.
“I’m something of a First Amendment purist, so I would never presume to tell anyone in the media what to print or broadcast. But there are real victims here, and families experiencing true grief and pain. Don’t forget that, okay?”
“I know that’s what you and the other card-carrying members of the PC police would have us believe. But things are always more complicated than they appear,” Yeager said, self-consciously cryptic. “Isn’t that a constant theme in Poe’s work?”
His face was blank, unreadable, and Tess realized he would never tell her what he knew, not after she rejected his great gift of five minutes of television.
She got up to leave. “I don’t pretend I’m an expert on something after skimming a few books. Still, I’m not sure how your theory gibes with ”The Purloined Letter,“ which states that the things you’re looking for are often hidden in plain sight.”
Yeager had one last wheedle in him. “If you came on my show, you’d become a nationally known expert. Whenever Nightline or CBS News or Dateline needed a private detective, you’d be on the Rolodex. It’s good exposure.”
“It’s generally agreed,” Tess said, “that I’m overexposed. But good luck. If I’m near a place with cable television on Thursday night, I’ll try to watch.”
Chapter 10
The Enoch Pratt Free Library always lifted Tess’s spirits, and she was in need of a lift when she walked through its doors later that day. She had wasted much of the morning, trying to run down Yeager ‘s tantalizing clue about the other two related cases. She had even given the tip to Herman Peters at the Blight, hoping to steal Yeager’s scoop from under him, but the young police reporter had been indifferent to her gift, sighing so heavily into his cell phone that it sounded as if he had entered a wind tu
“I hate a red ball,” he muttered, from some alley in West Baltimore where he was watching police pack up the year’s latest murder victim, a young black man who had been shot to death. The anti-red ball, if you will. “I hate the fact that all these reporters think they know everything about homicide investigations, because they watch NYPD Blue and Homicide reruns.
They even try to talk the talk. And this guy Yeager is the worst, with his “bunky‘ this and ”skel’ that when he’s trying to score points with the cops. I think Rainer hates him more than he hates you.“
“Great,” Tess said. “But just because he’s irritating doesn’t mean he doesn’t know anything. He said there are two more cases, Herman. What of it? Are there other beatings? Homicides?”
“I know there aren’t any homicides linked to either of these cases,” he said adamantly, as if he had memorized every case file on every homicide-and perhaps he had. “In fact, I’m pretty sure there’s no relationship between the attack on Shawn Hayes and this Poe shooting. The cops told me off the record what happened-Hayes went cruising, picked up the ultimate rough trade, things got ugly. It happens. But whoever beat Shawn Hayes didn’t then buy a gun and stake out the Poe grave. It’s a ridiculous theory.”
“And yet it’s a theory that came from someone in the police department.”
“So your other friend says. My guess is that Rainer is setting up a gay detective, giving him false information about sensitive cases to see if he’ll blab. Watch for that shoe to drop in a few weeks.”
“Would Rainer do that? Sounds positively Mc-Carthyite.”
“A cop’s first loyalty is expected to be to the department. Rainer’s capable of double-crossing a Baptist to see if he’ll leak information to his congregation. He may be homicide, but he belongs in Internal Affairs if you ask me.”
Ah, it was her fault for listening to a television talking head. Why had she believed Yeager?
So she hung up the phone and went to the Pratt, because of a note left in her mailbox by some crank. She really ought to become a little more discerning. Especially given that no one was actually paying for her services.
But Tess would go a long way out of her way to end up at the Pratt. She loved everything about it, begi
But the Pratt remained the Pratt and managed to hold on to its dignity, even as it moved into the computer age and tried to bring its ancient branches up to code. Tess liked the soaring atrium here at the Central Library, one of the few places that made her feel small. She liked the gold leaf, the portraits of the Lords Baltimore, the hidden treasures of the Maryland Room. Best of all, the Pratt wasn’t a hushed, somber place. Sounds bounced from the ceiling to floor and back again-respectful, librarylike sounds, but sounds nevertheless. In all her years of coming here, Tess had never heard a librarian say “Hush.”
She also had never met a librarian quite like the young man who sat at the Information Desk on this particular day. Her aunt Kitty had been a school librarian, so Tess was not given to bun-and-bifocal stereotypes. Still, she was not prepared for this ruddy-faced young man, who would have looked more at home on a rugby field or in a bar afterward, lifting a pint. Sweetly rumpled, with light brown curls that looked as if he had just gotten up from a nap, he brought to mind the bookish heroes Tess had encountered in her childhood reading. He was Louisa May Alcott’s Laurie, Maud Hart Lovelace’s Joe Willard, Lenora Mattingly Weber’s Joh
“My name is Tess Monaghan,” she began, in her sweetest, most optimistic ma
His baritone was warm and friendly. His words were not.
“The Poe Room, like the Mencken Room, is reserved for scholarly research,” he said. “It’s closed, except for special events. I’m afraid private detectives don’t make the cut, although I’m sure whatever you’re doing is quite interesting. How does one become a private detective, anyway?”
“Look-I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
He thumped his nameplate. “Daniel Clary.”
“As in the creator of Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby, and Ellen Tebbits?” Tess had loved those books when she was a child.
“She’s Cleary. I’m Clary.”
“Oh.” He may not look like the clichéd librarian, but he admonished like one. “Well, who has the authority to decide if I can have access?”
“I have the authority. I’m a librarian, not a receptionist. And there are other people waiting.”